New Bookmarks, or Maybe Not?

Every year, for the last several years, I have made a set of 10 Sailor Moon bookmarks to match Anime USA's theme. This is the result from some of the previous themes:

2010--Arabian Nights

 2011--Military (I went with plugsuits)

2012--Vaudeville/Carnivale Cabaret

This year their theme is medieval Japan. The thing is... I'm not going to be at Anime USA this year (this will actually be the first year I have not been at AUSA since 2008). My question is: should I draw the set of Sailor Moon geisha bookmarks, or take a year off? I love the ideas of designing kimonos for each of the girls (and maybe putting Tuxedo Mask in medieval samurai armor). Of course, I've already got an incredibly long list of ideas and things I want to draw, so maybe taking some time off might be good.

AUSA 2011 Recap

I spent my weekend at Anime USA, an anime convention located in the Washington D.C. area, with my husband, two good friends, Kevin and Melissa, and my middle son, Luke. This is why there was a gap in posting here. ^_^ Just a heads up, but this week is likely to be rocky for posts too given the holiday, plus we're moving, so there may be a few days where I just don't have access to a computer or internet.

Onto the AUSA recap. This convention went off a lot more smoothly than AWA. We only had a few hitches getting the new bookmarks printed, but things came together, and we were actually on the road by 2:00 p.m. Thursday, which was awesome. The trip was easy, especially since no one was exhausted. We ate a leisurely dinner on the road to avoid most of rush hour traffic and pulled into our hotel a little after 7:00. We spent the evening playing cards (Munchkin mostly). It was nice not to be working on last minute laminating or costuming details--this doesn't happen very often.

Friday morning, we got to take our time waking up and dragging our butts downstairs to set up. My table ended up being in a slightly awkward location--it was right in the middle of a walkway that was only about 3-4 feet wide, which didn't leave a lot of room for people if they wanted to stop and look. I spent most of the weekend at my table--no surprise there, right? I did leave Friday evening to go see the Trigun movie with Luke, which was awesome, except for the fact that we got there late and couldn't really see the screen.

Saturday, my husband took Luke to see Godzilla vs. Mothra. Luke absolutely loved it, and apparently, near the end of the movie when Mothra was destroying a large chunk of the city, right after an especially large explosion, someone in the back yelled: "My cabbages!!!" Shaun said that got cheers from the audience. I kind of wish I'd been there to hear that one. For those who don't know what the cabbage reference is from, go watch the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series. It's well worth watching.

Sunday was quiet, relatively. Overall, I had a blast at the convention. I really enjoyed talking with a lot of people who came by the table. I got to see some great costumes--there were tons of Miyazaki cosplays there this year, which I loved. My favorites were the girl dressed as Sheeta from Castle in the Sky and the couple dressed as Haru--in her yellow gown that she wears in the Cat Kingdom--and Baron from The Cat Returns. I also saw several Howl cosplays (Howl's Moving Castle), San (Princess Mononoke), Ponyo, and the two girls from My Neighbor Totoro--I don't remember their names. There was one particularly well-done Howl who went around Saturday with a Jack Sparrow taking votes as to who was more of a "lady's man." I, of course, voted for Howl. Jack's good, and this particular cosplayer did a great job of playing the role, but he can't compare to Howl, at least in my opinion. I found out Sunday from Howl that he won that contest by one vote. There wasn't really anything spectacular going on at AUSA this year, but the people really made it a great con.

Crazy Month Is Crazy

I completely forgot to post this yesterday. I'm not too surprised considering what's going on here. This post is to give you guys an idea of what this month is going to look like, and why work on art projects is going to be kind of hit or miss.

As you may recall, last week, I posted that we got an offer on the house. The house has been inspected, and we have a list of repairs to make--all of them fairly reasonable. Starting now through the end of the month, we will be working on fixing things in our house. Also, later this month we will be packing up and moving everything (again), although this time it won't be so bad since a lot of our stuff is still in storage and won't have to go anywhere; we'll just be packing up what we kept and adding it to storage. Still, I hate moving and packing, even with less stuff. >_<

So, the first reason why this month will be crazy is we're going to be moving and doing a bunch of repairs to the house. The next reason is Anime USA. This coming Thursday, we'll be driving up to the Washington D.C. area, and spending Friday through Sunday running a table in Artist Alley. On that note, I am still trying to get the Sailor Moon mecha pilot bookmarks finished for the convention. I have today, and maybe Monday, to get those done. @_@ At that point, I have to take stuff to the printers, so I make sure I have time to cut out and laminate everything before we leave for the convention.

Oh yeah, and if that wasn't enough craziness, I'm pregnant. =P Seriously. XD This explains why I've been so tired over the last month--those following me on Twitter might have noticed the number of naps I've been taking or nights where I've just gone to bed super early. All in all, that's not a bad thing, and the real craziness for that won't show up until the spring, but it does affect my energy levels, so I probably won't be pulling the all-nighters I normally do before a convention, which means I may not be finishing all 15 of the bookmarks I wanted to have done--#5 will be done today; I might try for 10.

Keeping all that in mind, I'm going to try and keep working on art projects, but it's probably going to be a fairly slow month. I'm hoping December will be better--I'll be chilling at my parents temporarily while we save money for a down payment on a new place to live, so the moving and house stuff won't be an issue. There are also no conventions on my schedule for December. There will still probably be low-energy days, but I think I can work with that. December, I'm planning on a new "What Would ___ Do?" set. Twelve new prints and badges featuring different games and characters from the first set. In the next couple of weeks I'll probably put some polls up for some of the games where I'm having trouble picking which character I want to draw from it. =)

Works in Progress No. 2, Vol. 8

This week, there's going to be a real WIP post. =D This week I've been working on the Sailor Moon mecha pilot bookmark series for Anime USA. I really want to make this a nice even set of 15 (I like sets with numbers divisible by 5--at least for bookmarks; for badges, I like sets divisible by 4 for whatever reason). This set will feature at the minimum the same characters from my Sailor Moon harem bookmark series, done for Anime USA last year, plus Sailor Chibi-Moon. That gives me 11. I don't like 11. If I can manage it, I want to add the three Starlights and human Luna. Cross your fingers that I can become a drawing demon this week. =P

So far, I have finished Sailor Moon and Sailor Mercury. Sailor Mars is about half finished.